XI.

An annoying sound beeping from her receiver was what woke Heva up that morning. Her head pounding, her eyes crusted, her hair a mess, she couldn't remember even coming to her room. The last thing she remembered was looking out into the sunset, sitting on a beautiful hillside on the holodeck with Commander Data.

She grinned and sat up, her blanket fell from her. Data must have carried her back and put her to bed. Heva felt warmth, comfort in knowing how kind he had been to her. She felt a tight knot in her chest, her heart pounded. Her hand found it's way over the gentle, rhythmic thumping that it made against her skin, her mind raced with thoughts of the date she had gone on with him.

She remembered walking around the corner to see him, standing ever so mellow with a hand in the pocket of his slacks. Sunglasses were perched atop his head, mingling with his dark hair. His yellow eyes, like bright lights of joy when he saw her. She never thought she could be attracted to someone like him, but she was. From the moment she first met him, she knew he would become someone special to her. Yet she didn't suspect such a fast wind to catch her up in him.

She was jolted out of her thoughts by the captain's voice resonating around her room.

"Lieutenant! Are you there? Lieutenant?"

"Yes, sir." She replied, her voice scratchy from her drunkenness.

"We've been trying to contact you for hours! Are you alright?"

"Yes, yes I'm fine. I guess I just…slept in. It won't happen again, captain."

"That's quite fine, Lieutenant. We have bigger problems. One of our guests just turned up dead in the hallway not far from your quarters. We tried to get you to open the door but assumed you weren't there. It's been two hours since we found him."
Her beating heart halted in it's tracks, surprise and shock filling her nerves. "How did he die?"

"SHE died of phaser burns to her face and neural damage to her cerebral cortex; she was shot…then beaten to death."

"Who was it?"

The captain hesitated. Finally, he replied in a quiet, foreboding voice. "Vruy. One of the children."

Heva couldn't believe what she was hearing, but she knew that she must see the body, to confirm the fear that this wasn't a dream.

"Where is she?"

"In sick bay. Doctor Crusher is waiting for you there."

When Heva arrived in sick bay, she saw the body of the Frugian who had died. She was indeed very young looking, frail, lying there on the table. Her eyes were closed now, but where her eyebrows would have been, the arches were raised in an expression of surprise.

"Doctor." Heva greeted sadly. Beverly stood over the corpse, a frown on her face as she scanned it's body.

"Lieutenant, I was hoping you would be here earlier. What happened to you?"

"Late night." Heva said; her heart jumping. "What happened?"

"Well," Beverly began. "I'm the one who found her. I was walking down the hall, actually I was going to see if you were alright. I didn't tell anyone that you were drinking," Heva turned away as she felt her face turning red. "Data sent me to see if you were sick. But then I heard this…horrid shrieking. It was as though a baby were crying as loud as it could, like its mother had just abandoned it…"

Her face turned grim and the blood drained from her face. Recalling that morning seemed to disturb her more than Heva realized. "Then…as I was running to see who it was, I heard this…cracking sound. It was obviously the cracking of her skull. It made me sick, I ran faster and faster but it was too late. She was already dead when I arrived."

"Didn't you see anyone else?" Heva asked, looking up at Beverly.

"No, I searched the span of the hall, I looked in every room but yours because I already knew you'd be there. I found no one."

The two of them looked down at Vruy's pale form. Her skin had gained a texture that looked like rubber, her head indented and the skin broken where she had been struck. Phaser burns covered the right side of her face, giving the impression that she had laid that side onto a stove top and left it there for hours.

Part of her chin had disintegrated into nothing but bone, her whole neck was burned to a point where even if she had lived her skin could never be repaired back to normal. She was less than who she was, even if she was dead.

"I already did an autopsy." Beverly said, in a rather high pitched voice. "It's conclusive, the damage to her skull and cerebral cortex is what killed her. The phaser burn was done post mortem, which is unusual. Why would someone shoot her AFTER they had already killed her?" she trailed off, looking up at the ceiling and squinting her eyes at the lights.

"Perhaps…" Heva began, Beverly looking back at her.

"Perhaps, what?"

Heva returned her gaze to Vruy, taking in the painful image of what she looked like now compared to the meeting they had only a day and ago. "Perhaps she knew something…something she wanted to tell me. And someone on this ship wanted her to keep quiet."